


If You Should Ever Wake

by glittagal333



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Clueless Boys, Confused About Feelings, Fluff, M/M, Nightmares, Post-Movie(s), Tooth-Rotting Fluff, and stuff, god i'm so bad at tags i'm sorry, neglect of self care, oh there's spoilers so don't read if you haven't seen the movie, tell me if you need more tags
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-25
Updated: 2015-12-25
Packaged: 2018-05-09 03:16:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5523368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glittagal333/pseuds/glittagal333
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Everyone had always said to talk a person while they were in a coma (although Poe had never used that word, because it wasn’t a coma), so he did talk to Finn, all the time, when he wasn’t singing, trying to use his voice to will him back to the waking world."</p><p>Poe needs Finn to wake up. Finn needs someone to wake him up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If You Should Ever Wake

**Author's Note:**

> Partially inspired by a headcanon given to me by my sister (and apparently shared by a great deal of the fandom) in which Poe sings to Finn, which I then expanded into 'Poe sings to Finn every damn day he's out after the Starkiller's destruction'.  
> And then a whole lotta other stuff happened whilst I was writing and it got bigger than I thought. Wow. I hope you like it?
> 
> Bother me on tumblr here: http://bowdowntomama.tumblr.com

“I was wondering where you were.”

Poe jumped out of his half-slumber at the sound of the General’s voice, grimacing a little when a muscle cramp in his shoulder decided to make itself known at the same moment. Beside him, Finn still remained unconscious in one of the medical bay’s incubators.

It had been only a few hours after the destruction of the Starkiller. Poe could still catch the scent of burnt metal off of himself and the injured man slumbering at his side.

“The others are celebrating our victory. They’re all asking after you,” Leia managed a small smile. “I told them the medical team were giving you a final look over, but I doubt it’ll keep them away for long.”

She walked over to the incubator, eyes examining Finn’s form, ears just about picking up his shallow breathing. Poe’s worry was almost tangible in the air, so she turned to him next and placed a hand on his shoulder.

“You’re a hero, Poe Dameron.”

“I wouldn’t have been able to do it without him disabling the shields,” the pilot’s voice was rough and tired sounding. “And without the hole in the oscillator.”

He noticed the flash of pain crossing the General’s eyes the moment he’d said it. Damnit. That was stupid.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—“

“You’re a hero, Poe Dameron,” Leia repeated, more insistent. “You, and Finn, and Rey and...”

She trailed off, pursing her lips, exhaling loudly through her nose. A shaking breath. She closed her eyes.

“And Han,” Poe finished for her. “Likes making a habit of being a hero, huh?”

He smiled at managing to coax a laugh out of her, but when she finally opened her eyes again they were shining with tears waiting to fall down her cheeks.

“Oh _please_. I never needed him to save me, by any means.”

What followed was not another weak attempt at a laugh, but shaking shoulders and very candid, loud sobs. Poe leapt out of his seat by Finn’s incubator and held the suddenly very small looking woman in his arms and let her pour her misery all over his chest.

He wanted to help her. The General meant the world to him, but there wasn’t anything nearly as simple as a snap of the fingers he could do at that moment to ease her.   
So he sang, very softly, into her hair and carefully rubbed her back with one hand, and kept his eyes on Finn the entire time, willing whatever watched over the cosmos to bring the ex-trooper back to them.

\---

“Sir? The villagers?”

“Kill them all.”

Deafening, deafening gunfire rang through the air, mixed with the shrieks and death rattles of the people being mercilessly slaughtered before his eyes.

Why was he back here? Back in burning Jakku, surrounded by Stormtroopers and corpses, with the weight of a firearm heavy in his hands? A firearm he still doesn’t have the stomach to fire?

“No,” Finn whispered to himself, dropping the blaster on the sand at his feet. “It can’t be... I can’t be back here—”

“FN-2187,” Phasma is suddenly behind him, hands on his shoulders and yanking him backwards into her body. “A number. A Stormtrooper. A nobody.”

“Th-that’s not true!” he cried, struggling against the captain’s grip but not finding any give in it, either. “My name is Finn!”

“No name. No friends. You’re nothing,” Phasma hissed, shoving her own firearm into his hands. “You have orders, 2187. Kill them.”

Finn’s hands were shaking violently, but were forced to the trigger by one of Phasma’s own.

“ _Kill them_ , 2187.”

It filtered in very faintly, at first, but everything around him – the blood and the flames, the screaming and horror – seemed to go into slow motion as something else was picked up by his ears:

Singing.   
It was somebody singing, the most gentle, soft, wonderful thing he’d ever heard. It was so incredibly foreign to the entire situation, to the environment of the First Order. Alien. It was like someone was calling to him, without even needing to use his name. He had to follow it. He needed to know who it was.

“FN-2187!” Phasma’s voice drew out the title for an unrealistically long period of time. Everything around Finn was still slowed down. Everything except the singing.

“My name,” the struggle against the captain’s grip was absolutely draining, but becoming an easier battle to win. “is _Finn_!”

He nearly tripped over his own feet with the force of his disentanglement from Phasma’s hands, loosing a delighted cry of victory and half-running towards the sound of the singing.

But Jakku started disappearing around him – soon, it was trees, leaves on the ground. Snow. The bodies vanished into dust the moment a breeze picked up, but the one thing that remained unchanged was the voice he was so desperately following through this evolving reality.

“ _Traitor_!”

Kylo Ren’s shriek seemed to shake the entirety of the world around him, and it was only then that Finn realised he was back on the Starkiller planet.

But Rey wasn’t here. Neither was the lightsaber. It was just him and Kylo Ren, who expertly spun his dreaded red saber in one hand.   
Finn could still hear the singing. He needed to get to it. He already knew how this fight ended.

“FN-2187,” Finn had never heard Kylo say his old name before – venom coated each and every syllable, as if his voice alone could kill. “Where are your friends, traitor?”

It was a valid question. Rey was supposed to be here with him.

“She’s _left_ you,” he growled, taking a step towards Finn. “Are you even surprised? You’re a number. You’re _nothing_.”

Finn felt his entire body go violently stiff at a mere gesture of Kylo’s hand, beginning to sweat as the red saber came closer and closer to his person.

“Rey belongs with someone who understands her power. She needs a teacher, not a traitor. You nearly left her before. You’re unreliable,” a flick of his wrist had Finn crying out in pain. “Rey belongs with the First Order. With _me_.”

The singing grew in volume, but was constantly distorted by the sounds emanating from the lightsaber now pointed right at Finn’s heart.

“There’s nobody who needs you. Who wants you back. Don’t lie to yourself.”

_Finn?_

The singing stopped altogether, replaced by a voice that echoed all over the sky and the trees. It was so familiar, so gentle.   
So caring.

“I could kill you now and nobody would notice. Nobody would care.”

_Please come back. I need you to come back._

“All you are is a wildcard, in the grand scheme of things.”

_I know you can do this. You’re one of the strongest people I know._

“The Resistance doesn’t need you. The First Order doesn’t need you. So I—”

_Please, Finn._

“will put you out of your misery!”

_You need to wake up._

Kylo Ren swung his lightsaber into the air and brought it crashing down on Finn’s body.

\---

Leia had given Poe a piece of well-deserved time off after the destruction of the Starkiller, and he had spent every minute of it at Finn’s bedside – sewing his damaged jacket, sleeping, drawing up very loose new battle formations for future skirmishes with the First Order – but mostly twiddling his thumbs and singing.

Waiting, actually.

That’s what he had been doing the most of. Finn’s condition never improved, but it never got any worse, either. The entire situation was purgatorial, a limbo that Poe couldn’t even think about walking away from even though he was perfectly capable of doing so.  
He wasn’t going to leave Finn. Not until he woke up. Probably not even after that.

The days dragged on and on and on. The lack of windows in the medical wing meant that at some points, the only way to tell when the days had passed was when the nurses came in to do their day and night checkups, respectively.  
They brought Poe food, too. He probably would have forgotten, otherwise, if he was being honest.

Everyone had always said to talk a person while they were in a coma (although Poe had never used that word, because it _wasn’t_ a coma), so he did talk to Finn, all the time, when he wasn’t singing, trying to use his voice to will him back to the waking world.

“Finn..?” he tried on day who-knew-what (it had been at least thirteen at this point). “Please come back. I need you to come back.”

He could draw a map of Finn’s face at this point, were his hands gifted for artistic drawing and not just the tactical aspect of it. All of the ex-trooper was so familiar at this point that Poe could pick out pieces of him blindfolded.  
But it was his voice that he missed. His laugh, accompanied by his big, beaming smile. The wonder in it at every little new thing he learned and saw. The hope.

He very carefully traced Finn’s cheek with the back of his hand. He hadn’t held him in such a long time, felt him in any comforting fashion. As long as nothing got better, it meant that it could get worse. Comfort was standing with its back to a cliff edge.

Sure, it could come running back to safer ground. But it could fall to its doom, as well.

“I know you can do this,” Poe told him on day nineteen (apparently). “You’re one of the strongest people I know.”

And it was true – a Stormtrooper who had cast away the First Order, survived the crash on Jakku and the unforgiving desert that came with it, made it off-planet again and _then_ survived the attack on Takodana.   
Then right back into the First Order’s clutches when he travelled to the heart of the Starkiller in order to bring down the shields and rescue Rey and finally, surviving an attack from Kylo Ren himself – because Finn _was_ surviving this.

Poe’d finished sewing up the jacket, anyway, from where it had been cut by Kylo’s saber. It was ready to be worn again, by the man who’d survived everything whilst wearing it.

“Do you know how long you’ve been here?” Leia asked him on what she would go on to tell him was day twenty-one.

“Not exactly.”

His eyes hadn’t moved from Finn once, but the General could see a new sort of fatigue beginning to set in on him – not physical at all.   
Emotional.  
She knew what waiting for someone you cared about was like. She had waited a long time for Han.

“Is... my time off over?” Poe asked her, finally meeting her gaze. He looked run-ragged, with dark circles under his eyes and stubble that couldn’t quite be called that anymore, but wasn’t quite a beard, either.

Leia wordlessly shook her head, approaching Finn’s bedside and giving the still unconscious boy a onceover. He hadn’t moved once, not even a little. Just breathing that was thankfully getting better with each passing day.   
Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Poe pinch the bridge of his nose and _crumble_ a little. Everything about him was intense, but tired at the same time.

A man thrown headfirst into a very alien territory, without any practise. He’d never had to do anything like this.   
This waiting. The same waiting she had gone through.

She wondered if this was what Luke had seen...

“You’ve been here for three weeks, Poe. Finn is very lucky to have someone who cares about him like you do.”

When she was falling in love with Han.

Poe ran a hand through his messy hair, sighing, closing his eyes.

“Feels like it’s been longer.”

“Waiting for someone to come back to you makes every passing day seem like two,” she looked to him, waiting until her gaze would catch his own, and it did. “... Waiting for someone you _love_ to come back, longer still.”

A silence hung over the room for a long time. For a moment, Leia was afraid she might have made an incredible misjudgement of the situation, but she then witnessed a literal storm of emotions wreak havoc in Poe’s eyes – he looked like a deer caught in headlights.   
And then, tears. Not sorrowful, not joyful. Just a release of something built up inside of him for so long that upon hearing itself being called it poured itself outside of him without consent, the longing to be acknowledged finally sated.

Leia had her arms wrapped around him before he knew it, speaking softly to him, hushing on instinct even though he wasn’t making a sound, nor cry, nor sob.

“If there is anyone who can bring him back, it’s you, Poe,” she whispered to him. “I know you can do it.”

She left the medical wing without a word after holding him a little longer, leaving him constricted in his own emotions, wet eyes looking back to Finn again.  
Pulling his chair as close to the incubator as his own legs would allow, Poe placed one hand on Finn’s chest and used the other to gently stroke his hair.

“Please, Finn,” his voice was ragged, fatigue and emotion both being the reason. “You need to wake up.”

\---

The red saber never made contact with his body – there was no pain, no burning, nothing. Finn had had his eyes squeezed shut in dreadful anticipation, but upon realising nothing too terrible had happened, warily opened them again and found himself somewhere else entirely:

D’Qar. To be far more exact, the airfield of the Resistance base.

It was eerily quiet and empty, with not a single x-wing, person or droid in sight. Just familiar tarmac and grass.  
This was where he had been brought after the battle on Takodana. This was where he’d reunited with—

“Poe.” he realised aloud in a whisper.

A warm wind carried through the area, accompanied by the sudden pitter-pattering of rain, and – although very faint at first – a now very recognisable voice, singing again, soft and wonderful and heavy with _something_ that Finn couldn’t quite tack down.

It was Poe. It had _always_ been Poe.

“Poe?!” Finn cried into the emptiness. “Where are you?!”

No reply. Just singing, still. And what an intoxicating sort of sound it was, because Finn found himself running after the source again, with far more desperate footing this time, lungs burning with the force he pushed himself at.

“Poe!” he kept crying into the air. “ _Poe!_ ”

It felt like he had been running for miles and miles, the landscape around him repeating itself because the airfield was definitely _not_ this big. More than anything, he wanted to stop, to rest his aching legs and ease the tightness in his chest, but he couldn’t.   
The last time he had stopped running, Kylo Ren had showed up. That wasn’t an experience he exactly desired to repeat.

Besides, Poe was waiting for him. Calling him back. Finn couldn’t leave him waiting any longer.

At the exact moment that thought had been processed, he skidded to a halt – he had come upon a new clearing on the airfield, one he hadn’t run by five times already.

And there was an x-wing sitting in it.  
And standing with his back to Finn, wiping the starcraft down and singing to himself – no, not to himself, to the entire world, it felt like – was the one person Finn wanted to see, needed to see.

“Poe..!”

The pilot began to turn around at the sound of his name, but Finn was already running over to him, ready to embrace him like he had done before, on this same planet, this same tarmac, by this same ship.

“ _Poe!_ ”

\---

Day twenty one was beginning to draw to a close – Poe knew that because the nurses had just done their nightly checkups – and it seemed as if the three weeks of poor diet, lack of movement and general emotion distress had caught up with Poe all at once, heaped atop his form both physically and mentally.

He felt half-conscious, slumped over the side of Finn’s incubator, continuing to sing even though he was honestly exhausted and definitely needed a drink of water. Maybe all of those tears had used up whatever was left in his system.

But Leia’s words rang through his mind: _If there’s anyone that can bring him back, it’s you, Poe. I know you can do it._

He wasn’t about to give up, even though his body definitely wanted to. He needed Finn to come back. He needed to tell him—

“P... Poe...”

The pilot nearly fell off of his chair at the sound of Finn’s weak voice, fresh tears now forming in his eyes – tears of joy – as he collected his stumbling body and got close to the ex-trooper again.

“Finn?! Can you hear me?!”

He instinctively placed his hands on either of Finn’s shoulders and had to restrain himself from the urge to shake the other man back to the waking world.  
No. No no no. Not with his hands.

“Finn, it’s Poe. It’s me.”

With his _voice_.

Finn’s eyes slowly began to flutter open, sucking in a gulp of air through his mouth and immediately wincing in pain at, well, everything – sounds were too loud, lights were too bright, scents were too strong – except a gentle sort of warmth on both of his shoulders.   
It was hard to focus on anything, still, but he knew, he _knew_ —

“Poe,” with a great deal of effort, he managed a smile. “You’ve... you were...”

“Hey, take it easy,” Poe hushed him, trying to tell himself the exact same thing. All his body wanted to do was jump for joy and hug Finn tight and never, ever let him go. “Just take it one step at a time, buddy.”

 _Buddy_. Yikes.

“Did you... you were,” Finn coughed dryly before he could finish, taking the flask of water Poe handed to him and gulping from it greedily. “I... were you... do you sing..?”

The pilot felt a flush creep up from his neck and silently thanked the Force that Finn could barely keep his eyes open at that moment.

“Yeah. I do,” a beat. “I sang to you pretty much everyday. And I talked to you. You’re supposed to talk to people when they’re like... what you were like.”

“I heard you,” Finn managed to turn his head a little, trying to force his eyes open. He just wanted to see Poe’s face. “It was... it helped a lot.”

“Really..?”

There.  
Oh, man, seeing Poe’s face after the hell inside his own head was such a sight for sore eyes (literally, in this case). He looked exhausted, and stubble-y, with bloodshot eyes and messy hair, but he was still so...

So...

“Yeah. I saw you, in my dreams,” wow, he could have phrased that better. “But I didn’t see your face.”

Until now. And it was beautiful.  
The blush still hung all over Poe’s doe-eyed face, his absolutely ecstatic face, his tear streaked face, so so gorgeous and—

Wait. Tear streaked?   
(Gorgeous?)

“You’ve been crying.”

The pilot seemed taken aback by Finn’s words, and immediately wiped his face.

“It’s been... rough. Waiting for you, I mean.”

“How long have I been like this?”

“Three weeks,” the weight of the words smacked Finn in every aspect of his psyche as hard as they could. “Felt like a whole lot longer, though.”

Three weeks. Poe had been here for three weeks? Waiting by his bedside for three weeks? Three _whole_ weeks?  
He looked exhausted. He hadn’t shaved, his hair certainly didn’t look that washed, and everything was finally starting to sink into Finn’s dopey, sleepy head that Poe _had not left_ since the Starkiller had been destroyed.

“Finn,” Poe spoke up in the midst of his train of thought which was quickly becoming a derailed mess of realisation, his voice earnest and exhausted and heavy with that same thing he couldn’t pinpoint back in his own dreams. “I’m... I’m so glad you’re back.”

Finn finally realised the gentle warmth on his shoulders was both of Poe’s hands. They were both quiet for a moment, just looking at each other – Poe drinking in Finn’s voice, his smile, his eyes; Finn reacquainting himself with Poe’s face – and barely even noticed their bodies moving somewhat of their own accord, closer, closer—

Poe closed the distance between them, kissing Finn very gently, a hand cupping his cheek. The ex-trooper felt an entirety of weight being lifted from him that he didn’t even know he was carrying. He had no idea he had craved this, but at the same time, he felt a piece of his mind crying ‘ _Finally!_ ’.

It was Poe. Poe Dameron, who’d waited by his bed and talked to him and sang to him for _three weeks straight_. Poe Dameron, who’s voice had pulled him out of his own nightmares, just like he had when they’d escaped from the First Order.  
Beautiful, talented Poe Dameron. Yeah. Of _course_ he had been craving this.

“Poe?” he asked softly between what was about to become kiss number three.

“Yeah?” Poe asked, eyes adoring, smile so genuine, so _loving_ , and _that_ was it, that was the thing Finn hadn’t been able to pinpoint about his voice earlier.

“Before you tell the others I’m awake... will you sing to me a little more?”

He felt Poe tangle the fingers of the hand that wasn’t on Finn’s face with his own, pressing their foreheads together gently and this whole waking moment was just so perfect.

“Anything you want.”

So, so perfect.


End file.
